How to disable HLT instruction?

[Ghazan Haider]

I have a machine which freezes right after Windows2000 install, during
its first boot. In Linux/FreeBSD/Solaris/Windows98, it actually runs a
little bit after booting before freezing. I tried disabling various
things and disabling the HLT instruction in Linux did the trick. Yes I
tried diabling ACPI and APIC, together, both in Linux and Win2k, didnt
work.

So how do you disable the HLT instruction in Windows2000 during
installation or otherwise?

 

[Ghazan Haider]

Wow this must be a tough question. I dont personally know which DLLs
execute the HLT instruction, and if it can be disabled at all. Dont
know either if replacing the CPU will fix the issue.

Just for the record, I've upgraded the IBM bios to latest and fiddled
with ALL ACPI/power management settings, removed all cards and drives,
loaded safe settings in BIOS etc. HLT keeps breaking things and
running a Linux kernel without HLT, or Windows95 works fine, with
uptimes upwards of a week.

 

[Rick]

Wow this must be a tough question. I dont personally know which DLLs
execute the HLT instruction, and if it can be disabled at all. Dont
know either if replacing the CPU will fix the issue.

Just for the record, I've upgraded the IBM bios to latest and fiddled
with ALL ACPI/power management settings, removed all cards and drives,
loaded safe settings in BIOS etc. HLT keeps breaking things and
running a Linux kernel without HLT, or Windows95 works fine, with
uptimes upwards of a week.

Disabling the HLT instruction isn't possible in Win2K. And
in any event your problem has nothing to do with the HLT
instruction. Don't you think it's just a little amazing that no
one else has ever reported the same issue?

You've got a hardware problem somewhere in your system.
If I had to guess I'd say it's either a flaky CPU or memory,
or poorly seated CPU or memory, or the wrong memory.
Running an OS without the HLT instruction just hides the
symptom of the actual problem for a bit longer, that's all.

Rick